A December 15 opinion piece by the Chinese embassy in The Canberra Times, for example, possibly confused readers by telling them about elections that China was holding.

"Elections?" they must have wondered. "Surely the Chinese Communist Party doesn't risk losing power."

They're fake elections, of course.

But that doesn't mean that the party ignores the people's demands. If it wants to keep running the country, it needs satisfaction with how it does its job.

The government is arranged in a geographic hierarchy, much as Australia is divided into states and territories that are then divided into local council areas. China has 50 times as many people, so it has more government levels.

It holds elections only near the bottom of the structure, at levels called townships and counties. The assemblies produced by those elections then choose representatives for the next level up, and the assemblies at that level choose for the level above it - and so on up to the national parliament, the National People's Congress.

It sounds rather rational and, moreover, democratic.

The catch is that the party controls who are candidates at the elections. And - surprise, surprise - they basically have to be members of the CCP.

By law, anyone can stand for election, but any unapproved person who does will soon have trouble with the cops. So almost no one tries it on.

But here's something that really does surprise people when they first hear it: China has eight political parties other than the CCP. Strictly speaking, the country is not actually a one-party state.

The catch? The other parties, all small, are basically pets of the CCP. They co-operate with it and support it, because if they didn't they'd be shut down in a flash.

China is now calling its governmental system "whole-process people's democracy", which the embassy tells us "includes democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management and oversight."

While the bit about democratic elections is nonsense, don't ignore the rest of the formula.

Credit where credit is due: the CCP does a generally good job in attending to all the governmental stuff that's important to people's day-to-day lives.

This hasn't just been the achievement of astonishing economic growth in the three decades up to 2011, which has resulted in Chinese people typically having many times the incomes their grandparents had at the same age.

It's also everything from collecting garbage to providing broadband internet service, building freeways, reducing hospital waiting times, regulating insurance companies and catching criminals.

Chinese government front-line staff are often lazy and obnoxious, but a conversation with a manager is much like one with an Australian official.

You'll hear about the trouble in getting money for some project, about how they've tried to improve service but people still complain, or about how they're looking at a new proposal and will finish a study in a few months.

[The conversation probably won't extend to how much the official's boss seems to be pocketing in bribes.]

Consultations and studies are the party's substitutes for being told what to do by the people.

Some idea for a new policy may arise, perhaps from an industry association, which is ultimately controlled by the CCP but still expected to express its opinions. Then there is a back-and-forth process of checking with people who may be affected, revising the policy and checking again. Lots of meetings are held.

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The new policy must not undermine the party's position, however, and it might be obstructed by officials and bribers who are doing nicely out of current arrangements.

Nonetheless, the results look good, if you ignore the lack of freedom. They remind people of Singapore, which has barely more than a pretence of democracy but, irritating democrats everywhere, world-beating government performance.

That's no coincidence. The CCP has studied Singapore for decades.

Its system is also attuned to picking up whinges, and officials are held responsible for public dissatisfaction. They're held responsible from above, not below.

Suppose there's a ruckus at an airport because of excessive flight delays. In fact, Chinese society is quite prone to ruckuses. Angry travellers might stage a spontaneous sit-in, some of them bashing the airport fittings and many of them screaming at the poor check-in attendants.

Most foreigners would imagine that a government like China's wouldn't put up with that sort of thing: surely the unruly travellers would be quickly packed off to detention for a few days, during which they might reflect on their unharmonious behaviour?

In fact, the airport and airline managers are the ones who would probably be punished.

It's not a policy that deters ruckuses. But it certainly keeps officials mindful of the need to keep the punters contented.

Credit where credit is due: New Zealand has stuck its head above the parapet.

As this column has pointed out, our trans-Tasman cousins have hardly been heroic in relation to China, preferring to let other countries take the heat in standing up to Beijing while New Zealand protects its exports.

But New Zealand joined Australia, Britain, Canada and the US two weeks ago in condemning the rigging of an election in Hong Kong, which China once promised not to molest before 2047.

Hardly any imagination is needed to guess how the party rigged the election: candidates had to be friendly to the CCP.